


spent my whole life driving in cars with boys

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, M/M, sad teenage runaway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was good and it was real and it made Niall choke back blood and tears and everything and nothing, made him feel empty and full like he was going to tip over and break only for nothing to spill out. </p><p>--</p><p>Niall goes through a list of boys before ending up with Harry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spent my whole life driving in cars with boys

**Author's Note:**

> not much dialogue but a lot of words. i ramble too much.

When Niall was seventeen he dropped out of high school, wrote his deadbeat drunk of a dad a goodbye letter, signed his name, and then he was off. At the time he was seeing Richie who was twenty four and insane and who gave Niall his first tattoo, a small little ‘R’ on his left hip that was supposed to mean forever. At the time Niall hadn’t known that Richard was going to be part of a string of forevers that lead to… well.

Richie drove a vintage red Mustang and listened to Led Zeppelin and had a knack for doing meth and they stayed at a string of motels, fucked in every one, and then they were gone. Neither of them had jobs or money but they were young and Niall just wanted to drive, baby drive. He’d left responsibility and being a good boy back home in rural Arkansas and now there he was eyes full of stars in the middle of San Antonio, Vegas, LA, places he’d only ever dreamed about and it was surreal.

Richie kicked him to the curb in the middle of November, a month after he’d dropped out and skipped town, left Niall right in the middle of a Special K gas station with nothing but cigarettes and disgusting nail beds. Niall was the poster child for dirty white boy but he was beautiful and he had rosy cheeks and the lightest eyes ever made him look like a supernova made him look ethereal and soon he was hitching a ride with Carl who was thirty five and who had a wife and two kids, a little three year old named Claire and a seven year old named Frankie. He’d told them he was off at a business trip for two months.

Niall spent two months staring at the roof of Carl’s car with this disgusting stain on it that little Claire had apparently made with sad Carl dicking into him and calling him ‘baby’ and ‘love’ and then giving him what he wanted which was money and drugs. Around Niall’s time with Richie he’d gotten a liking to cocaine which was easy and made him feel like any second he was just going to bounce off the walls made him feel like skin and bones and more skin and bones but he felt more… like there was something inside of him and it was just never-ending.

And Carl- god, Carl- was fucking in love with him. Carl told Niall everything, about how he never could come out because he was in this strict Mormon family or something like that and how he loved his wife but he didn’t _love_ his wife and that he wanted to do well by his kids but he just loved men. (Niall had told him he was twenty one; Carl had looked too wholesome to ever think about fucking a seventeen year old boy). And Carl bought him everything, bought him clothes and shoes like their little two month fling meant something like Niall actually cared about any of this.

Sometimes Niall- when Carl was asleep- would debate shooting him and taking his car. He knew where Carl kept his gun, right under his seat and he knew how to shoot him courtesy of Richie but then he thought about the drugs and the money and it was just so good. And he always always questioned his own sanity and if he was ever even a real person if he was a real person, sometimes he felt like he’d been molded from nothing and this existence was nothing and at the end of the day he’d die nothing. Which he supposed wasn’t far off. The Horans were known for doing nothing but fucking up. His mother had buggered off as soon as she’d had Niall, she was a hippy with stars in her eyes and flowers in her hair not made for the soccer mom life, his older brother had ended up in jail for Grand Theft Auto or something like that, and his dad was just… his dad and that wasn’t something he’d ever been proud of.

And here he was half boy/ half nothing.

In December it got cold and Carl bought him this nice jacket that made him feel like he was some kind of big 80s star in a movie especially when he’d sit on the hood of Carl’s car smoking Marlboros with crack in his system making him feel like a livewire making him feel like the universe. Carl made him get a tattoo the day after Christmas; it said ‘sugar’ and it was on Niall’s shoulder. Carl told him to never forget about him and with the drugs in his back pocket Niall thought ‘how could he?’ and then Carl was gone.

Left him in the beginning of January said something about going back home to the wife and kids, bought him a two week stay at a motel, but Niall felt disgustingly immobile and so he left. Started walking in his new shoes and his jacket and the clothes Carl had bought for him but he felt like a charlatan felt like a child playing a grown up game like he was playing dress up so he stripped of the clothes and threw them in the river. He felt foolish and smart all rolled into one and he smoked under the underpass and thought about where his next destination was going to be. Carl had left him in the middle of Napa Valley and he was cold and it was cold and he was impossibly alone.

He met Louis in a gas station. Louis was a skater with endless tattoos and he was punk rock or so he said,

“I love pretty boys.” Was the first thing he’d said to Niall and Niall had stared into his eyes and he knew a boy that looked like Louis could devour him whole and he didn’t mind being sucked out of his body for a bit. So Louis asked him his name and he said ‘Niall’ because what was Louis going to do? Search him and even then he wouldn’t find anything.

Louis was a meth head with ADHD and he was erratic, he was bouncy and he talked a lot about nothing which was completely refreshingly different from Carl. And he fucked like it was the last time he’d get the chance and it made Niall feel breathless, made him feel like Louis was taking him apart piece by piece every time they fucked at the skate park late at night with Niall’s bare back touching the cold cold platform. It was good and it was real and it made Niall choke back blood and tears and everything and nothing, made him feel empty and full like he was going to tip over and break only for nothing to spill out.

Louis was a thin boy with a meth habit and Niall was a thin boy and he was a crack addict. He slept in Louis’ shitty Jeep that he said his stepdad had gotten for him during the night times and during the days he’d sit at the half pipe and watch Louis shoot the shit with his friends and smoke and laugh like a normal boy. Louis was a senior though so sometimes he didn’t come around because he couldn’t because he had school and school god school and life in Arkansas seemed so far away like he was grasping at something in a dream even though it’d been real and it had only been a few months.

Louis was smart Niall could hear it when he talked and he’d heard his friends, the other skater boys with greasy hair and loud laughs shout ‘rich boy’ at him all jokingly and whatnot and it made Niall think about the kind of person Louis was when he wasn’t fucking himself up and fucking Niall. Niall knew Louis wondered about his tattoos, about the ‘R’ on his hip and ‘sugar’ on his shoulder but he never asked and Niall didn’t ever want to tell.

Louis said, “Where do you come from?”

And Niall said, “Nowhere. Fuck me, c’mon don’t ask questions.”

And Louis stared at him weird but did as he was asked.

He and Louis got matching tattoos that same week, he got a bird taking flight right on the knob on his spine because Louis had said it would look badass and Louis got a chain around his ankle that was supposed to symbolize something that Niall was too selfish to ask about. Louis kissed him deep that night licked into his mouth like he was trying to get Niall to swallow him.

Niall left in March felt like things were spiraling out of control all too fast, could see the way Louis looked at him like he was falling in love with him and it was different from when he was with Carl. Carl was thirty five and he had a wife and kids and it was his fault if he decided to fuck up his life for some pretty seventeen year old with sad eyes but Louis god Louis had things Louis had a life and Louis was pretty like something straight out of a magazine and he didn’t deserve a disaster and Niall was exactly that. He was chaotic and he was a hurricane and he never ever meant to be it just seemed to spin away from him before he could pull it back.

He met Zayn on the bus to Seattle. Zayn had paint caking his nails and he was wearing large glasses and he had a sketch pad under his arm and he was talking to someone over the phone. Niall was by the window seat trying not to stare because Zayn was gorgeous but maybe Zayn sensed it or maybe it was just another one of those forever things because Zayn looked up at him through his long long eyelashes and then he slid in right next to Niall, smelled sweet like cigarettes and fruit and paint smelled different from exhaust, regret, and meth.

Thirty minutes into the bus ride and Zayn turned to him all easy confidence and said, “You’re impossibly gorgeous. May I draw you sometime?”

And Niall said, “Yes.” Like everything was just that easy.

Zayn lived somewhere in between Seattle and Bellevue and he went to this small art school and lived in this small studio apartment. Niall told him some lie about his uncle’s house up in Seattle he was supposed to be living in and Zayn was all for Niall staying with him. And so he did, Zayn fucked him on every surface made him beg for it made him feel raw and real. He told Zayn about his cocaine thing about how everything felt unnatural when he wasn’t on it and Zayn kissed him and said he’d see what he could do.

Zayn told him he loved him a month into their living arrangement and Niall couldn’t look him in the eye without feeling sick to his stomach but it was good living with Zayn was good. He had a bed and he had someone even for a little bit and even though sometimes he felt like floating out of himself he didn’t and even though sometimes he felt like slamming his head repeatedly against a brick wall till his brains oozed out of his cracked skull he didn’t. He wasn’t even eighteen yet and he felt like he’d lived thirty lives, felt old and tired and so freakin’ restless.

Zayn didn’t ask him about his tattoos and Niall didn’t ask about his either, could sense from that faraway look in Zayn’s eye that he’d been in love with someone before. Zayn’s the person who made him start writing, bought him a new moleskin for the long days when he was away, and told him to write so he did. It smudged his hands but it made him feel like more a person, he felt like he was making up himself every time he wrote felt like he was being reincarnated.

He wrote about happiness and he wrote about the disgusting need to die and he never let Zayn see them and Zayn never asked. That was the thing about living with an artist, they had respect, and they had self-control. And he got overwhelmingly bad and cocaine was the only things that made him feel whole and Zayn drew him, Zayn captured him like he was more than just a depressed boy with skinny skinny bones withdrawing into himself as if he wasn’t trapped in this endless cycle of nothingness and cocaine and then nothingness again. Zayn gave him this tattoo, a triangle on his neck and he didn’t tell him why.

He left in May, stole a couple hundred dollars from Zayn’s wallet from his art of Niall, and then he was off. He made it to Carson City reminded him of Richie pressing him onto brick walls and kissing the breath out of him, reminded him of being flour: pure and simple.

Liam played the drums in a shitty indie band and was dating this girl with huge lips when Niall met him. Liam had his hair shaved and shit made him look like he’d just came from the army and he was so so beautiful, lit up the whole room and he smiled at Niall in his oversized Zayn sweater over his girlfriend’s head as if sending him a message and Niall was immediately sinking. They met in the bathroom of the diner and Liam said,

“’ave I met you before?” In this perfect accent like he didn’t know if he was British or French and Niall smiled, blushed and all looking down at his feet and Liam’s and said,

“I suppose I’d remember a face like yours.” Playing coy and cute even though all Liam wanted was a warm mouth and Liam just smiled at him then nodded his head like ‘get on with it’ and so Niall did sinking onto his knees and sucking Liam till he came in Niall’s mouth, fingers gripping at Niall’s hair and it was almost painful if it didn’t feel so good. Liam made these noises like Niall was everything he’d ever wanted and Niall was half in love while the other half felt like he was dying slowly. Liam had a girlfriend waiting for him. Liam scribbled his number into Niall’s palm and kissed it made it feel like forever. Made Niall feel like he was the one as if such trivial fairytale things existed in Niall’s perpetual reality.

Niall fucked around in motels for a few days staring at Liam’s phone number before trapping himself in an ancient looking payphone and with shaky hands calling Liam hoping he’d pick up.

He did on the fourth ring because he was probably busy and he sounded bored. “Yeah?” He answered the phone making Niall feel like he was falling in love, plucking at his petals like a love sick teenager.

“It’s Niall.” Niall said then tried to remember if he’d ever even given Liam his name and if so why would he bother to remember. He felt like an idiot like he was in way over his head like Liam was in the middle of the ocean and he hadn’t even learned how to swim yet.

“Pretty blonde?” Liam asked him voice syrupy and sweet making Niall disintegrate.

“I think.” Niall giggled. “How many pretty blondes you know?”

“Just one. Wanna meet somewhere?”

Please. Yes please, his brain said. “Alright.” His mouth supplied.

And then there he was in the middle of Carson City lying down in this hard as brick mattress with Liam pressing into him, kissing him and shoving his face into Niall’s chest with Niall’s arms wrapped around his back and his shoulders holding him. It was the most intimate thing Niall’d ever been a part of and he felt like he was falling apart, felt like the strong exterior he’d spent months building up was just crumbling at his feet. Liam called him ‘baby’ kept whispering in his ear like a prayer like Niall was his saving grace making Niall feel so so much made Niall feel like a poem he’d read when he still in school this one poem by Sonia Sanchez that he’d liked so much that made him cry.

Before Liam left he told Niall to call him and then he was gone just like that and Niall had the sudden urge to rush off the bed screaming for him to come back. But he didn’t, he just drifted into the bathtub, did some cocaine, and then showered the cocaine made the water feel like bullets like he was in the middle of a battlefield.

Liam drove a low rider even though he said they were out of style and he only let Niall drive around in it when his girlfriend was out of town. He put on his favorite bands like Greenday and Blink-182 and he’d drum on Niall’s thighs sometimes with his stick smiling all beautiful like making Niall fall for him and then they’d fuck in the backseat of his car with Niall staring at the stars feeling like they were all just falling on him suffocating him mending him. And Liam just kept going on and on with his ‘babies’ and his ‘you’re beautifuls’ making Niall endless.

He stuck around for Liam more than he’d ever stuck around for anybody, he lasted six months and his eighteenth birthday came and went unimportant. He didn’t even tell Liam and Liam called him ‘baby’ like it meant something like he wasn’t going to marry his girlfriend and have beautiful babies with her. Liam made Niall want to kill himself, made him want to just die. He got the tattoo and didn’t even tell Liam, the ‘baby’ right on his heart in Liam’s shitty scratchy handwriting making Niall fall for him making Niall want to die for him.

Liam said, “Where do you come from?”

And Niall said, “Arkansas.” Because Liam made him want to tell the truth. And then one day just like that Liam was gone, disappeared off the face of the Earth or disappeared off the face of Niall’s earth and it shattered him. It took two weeks before he caved before he slammed his head against the mirror felt the glass piercing at his skin made him want to die made him think of Liam and babybabybaby.

\--

And so it went like this.

He met Harry at the hospital. Harry was a nurse part time and a boy the other half.

“Alright?” Was the first thing Harry said to him when he opened his eyes. Harry looked like a half baby half man and he had eyes the color of trees nothing like Liam’s the color of wood and sometimes when they were in the middle of sex they were black like coal. Harry also had the pinkest lips and his voice was quite deep and didn’t fit his face, it rumbled through his bones.

And then he threw up. And passed out again.

When he woke up Harry was still there but he was wearing different scrubs and he was whistling a song, something familiar that Niall was sure he’d heard before.

“What’s that?” That was the first thing Niall said to Harry. Harry startled and stopped whistling, raising an eyebrow at Niall.

“Pardon?”

“The song you were whistling what is it?”

Harry smiled, “Penny Lane by The Beatles. You like The Beatles?” And oh right it was Zayn, Zayn loved The Beatles and Michael Jackson and old stuff like that would put it on when he was drawing Niall.

_penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes._

Niall remembered that song was stuck in his head for a week and not even the cocaine could take it away. Harry left while Niall was in thought and came back with someone who looked like an actual doctor, took Niall’s pulse and blood pressure, told him about the shards in his face and the amount of cocaine that was found in his system. They started talking about rehab and insurance and well Niall wasn’t ready for anything like that so he snuck out of the hospital in the middle of the night, shoved on his clothes and walked out.

It was cold and it was October and Niall didn’t know what was up and what was down, he kept thinking of Liam and-,

“Hey.” Niall snapped out of it and turned around only to get a glimpse of the nurse from the hospital. The Beatles nurse with the brown hair and the green eyes. Harry. Niall took off feet slapping against the pavement and he could hear feet after him, hitting the concrete in step with his.

“Why’re you running?” Harry kept saying like he wasn’t even running out of breath even though Niall was already lightheaded.

“Get away from me!” Niall screamed because he could and because well because he didn’t want Harry to realize he’d escape and try to bring him back like it was jail or something. Harry stopped running and Niall kept going, cold wind slicing at his ears and nipping at his skin but god he just needed to get away.

The next morning he walked straight into Harry at the diner. He was in scrubs as if he was on his way to work and he had coffee in his left hand. Niall blinked at him, heart thundering in his chest and he looked at Niall and smiled pleasantly and like a stranger,

“Morning.” And then he was slipping past and leaving.

Niall was on his last baggie of cocaine when he met Harry again at the hospital. Well he’d just found the hospital and Harry had come out of the doors at one point actually.

“Hi.” Niall said didn’t know why he was greeting this kid, why he hadn’t booked it and left the day he’d escaped but it was just… something magnetic and strangely alluring about Harry about his impish face and his large hands and the way his voice started at Niall’s hairline and ended at his toes. Harry looked at him and cocked his head,

“Hello?” He said like he was confused. Niall blinked not knowing what to say. Harry was strangely beautiful or maybe that was the cocaine talking either way he made him miss Liam a little less even though he knew that would wear off in a little and he’d be back to missing Liam and back to wanting to slam his head into a wall. “You look like you need some coffee. Want to go get some coffee with me?” Harry asked when Niall said nothing and Niall nodded.

Harry rode a bike and it made Niall’s stomach hurt just looking at it.

“You want me to walk to the diner?” Niall asked looking at the bike and then Harry but Harry just patted his handle bars and smiled,

“Come.” And he was serious and Niall was sad, nostalgic, and on drugs so he did. And Harry kept whispering Penny Lane the whole way there, Niall wobbling on his seat and feeling like he was going to go careening to his death at any moment. Harry held the door open for him all chivalrous and such and Niall felt way out of his limit. Harry ordered him a hot coffee and the same for himself and they slipped into a booth.

“I don’t know your name.” Harry said after the silence had gone on far too long.

“It’s Niall.” Niall whispered and Harry said,

“Scuse me?”

“Niall. My name is Niall.”

“I am Harry.”

“I know.” Niall said pointing to his nametag and Harry laughed.

“Woops.” Making Niall feel like a kid again, making Niall feel all but three again. Making Niall feel halfway happy again.

Niall started getting the shakes two days in. He didn’t have any money and Harry was a freakin’ nurse and he was so so desperate. He was hungry but not for food and he was irritable and he started suffering these hallucinations sitting under the underpass not knowing where to go not knowing how to feel. Every morning though Harry would buy him a cup of coffee and he’d try and be a functional human being.

Harry noticed two weeks in.

“Are you alright?” He asked when Niall hadn’t touched his coffee and when his fingers kept sporadically drumming on the table like he couldn’t control it.

“Mhm.” Niall said because he didn’t want Harry feeling bad for him because he could handle it but Harry had gentle eyes and a sweet smile and he said,

“I know an addict when I see one and you look like you haven’t showered in days. Come home with me yeah?” And Harry was just so innocent and so wholesome and good, so much better than Niall could ever be but just the thought of a warm bed and a beautiful boy was enough for him. Harry lived with a purple haired girl named Lou who was never around and he had a nice bathtub that Harry said rarely ran out of hot water. And Harry made him food but he couldn’t eat it even though he knew he’d gotten disgustingly skinny.

“What do you want?” Harry asked him all soft and beautiful and haunting.

“Life.” Niall said and Harry looked at him like Niall had just smashed his heart into pieces. Harry crawled under the sheets with him but he didn’t crawl into him and Niall spent the whole night breathing air into his lungs and thinking of Liam and thinking of Harry and putting the two next to each other in his head. Liam made him feel reckless but Harry made him feel safe and he was missing but yearning all at the same time.

Niall threw up the next day felt like his insides were crawling right out of him. And Harry pressed his lips to Niall’s forehead,

“You’re going to get better.” He said and Niall wanted to scream that he didn’t want to be better he just wanted to feel good but Harry looked determined and Niall was so so desperate for him because he looked so good and he felt so good and he made Niall’s insides feel so good. Maybe Harry was enough to cure him.

A week later Harry was telling him about this help group and Niall screamed at him till his throat was bloody and Harry was upset and he wanted to die. Harry slept on the couch as if it wasn’t his home and Niall stared at the spotless ceiling and thought about dying and how cigarettes were not helping him, how he’d been chain smoking endlessly to feel something other than burning hot depression.

“I’ll go.” He said to Harry the next morning tucking his body into Harry’s, feeling centered instead of restless.

He hated NA and he hated the people but Harry smiled at him like he was giving him life and Niall wanted Harry he wanted Harry’s mouth and Harry’s hands but it seemed like all Harry wanted was for him to get better. And Niall kept thinking about what would happen when he did, kept thinking of Harry kicking him out and leaving him for dead. He’d gone and got attached just like he did with Liam because he couldn’t learn a proper lesson because he loved beautiful boys almost as much as they loved him.

Harry asked him about the tattoos three weeks into NA meetings, staring into Niall’s eyes like he was the whole world. And Niall told him about Richie and being endless and seventeen, about Carl and power, about Louis and feeling like a kid again, about Zayn and writing, and then about Liam and betrayal cold betrayal settling his stomach killing him.

“So you get a tattoo for all those who’ve hurt you?” Harry asked him softly that night, pushing the blonde out of his face making him blush.

“I get a tattoo for all those who’ve made me feel like forever.”

“You know,” Harry said to him softly kissing on his forehead like he always did, “I’ve never met someone like you before.”

“Is that a good or a bad thing?”

“It’s life-changing.”

“I think,” Niall said but then stopped  himself because he couldn’t say it because saying it made it so much more real than feeling it.

“What?” Harry asked and Niall shook his head,

“Nothing. I just want to sleep.”

“Go to sleep then. I love you.”

_I’m in love with you good night._

\--

Harry kissed him two months into NA, gets him to go onto the rooftop with him, the rooftop of the hospital where Carson City looks like millions of little lightning bugs flying home where it looks alive and peaceful like everything Niall has ever wanted to be. It looks ethereal and it looks devastatingly beautiful and Harry kisses Niall right above it. And Niall thought about running from Harry that one night and the way Harry had chased him and maybe that was a sign of something more to come or maybe Niall had just been an idiot. But Harry Styles was in love with him and he didn’t feel like flinging himself off a building.

And so it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> i should probably apologize. title is from driving in cars with boys by lana btw.


End file.
